Tag Archives: Toddlers

Cinder: Dad will come to the phone in a minute, Mom. He’s just washing his hands–he was cleaning up the blood in the bathroom.

September 16, 2011

A reading assignment that will change your life:

Lawrence Block’s The Liar’s Bible. It’s a collection of columns on writing fiction Block wrote for Writer’s Digest in the 1980s. And it’s down-to-earth brilliant. READ IT.

A writing exercise to do just before making supper:

A garlic and tomato are having a fight. And go.

(No, seriously. Go. It can’t possibly be a good piece. It’s just play. It’s just fun. PLAY, dammit.)

An explanation:

This is the seventh week of my 12-week unplugged AWOL (don’t tell my clients… um or too many of my friends 😉 ). No phones, no wifi… also, no winter! I’m going to be documenting things old school via journals and postcards (if you want a postcard from… well, that place where I’m hiding… email your snail mail address to nothingbythebook@gmail.com).

The blog’s on auto-pilot with a conversation from the archives, a reading recommendation, a writing assignment (cause I can’t nag any of you in person), and unsolicited advice… er, that is, a re-run post of the kind I don’t write very often anymore.

Enjoy.

A re-run:

When Toddlers Attack / That Hitting Thing

Toddlers hit. Not all toddlers. But a lot of toddlers. Like, almost all toddlers, at least some of the time. And some of them—not a few, either, a lot—go through phases when they hit all the time. Attachment parented toddlers hit. Breastfed toddlers hit. Bottle-fed toddlers hit. Babyworn toddlers hit. Toddlers of parents who never raise their voices hit. Really. It’s not just your little guy.

When my first little guy when through this hitting phase, I felt incredibly isolated. Alone. And judged up the wazoo. Here’s our story.

2006. It happened today, in the playroom, and my head is still whirring. “Flora!” Cinder yells. “You wrecked my tower. That bothers me! Bothers me! I am so angry I want to hit you! But I don’t want to hit you! Grrr!” I poke my head in from the hallway. Cinder is standing closing and opening his fists and breathing. He sees me looking, looks at me. “I didn’t hit Flora,” he announces. “But I’m not proud of you!” he yells at her. She gurgles and hands him a Lego block. They start building the tower together.

I’ve been waiting for this day for… what, two years? Two years to the day, I think. And I know today isn’t the cure. It’s not the turn around, the end. He will hit his little sister again, probably later today. He will push her, pinch her. But he’s working through it—we’re muddling through it, he’s “getting” it. And the fact that this huge emotional break through—this discovery by himself that just because he wants to hit he doesn’t have to hit—has come on the heels of eight nights of peeing the bed puts all sorts of things into perspective for me. Makes me feel not quite so resentful as I wash the sheets and covers for the ninth day in a row…

I’ve been delaying posting this “hitting thing” exposition until I felt I could clearly articulate where we were, why, and how we got there. I don’t think that’s going to happen in the next few weeks or even months. But based on some conversations I’ve had with other mothers of closely spaced siblings—particularly when the older is a boy!—I think this is a story that must be told, in all of its messiness.

First published October 26, 2012 on Nothing By The Book. This happened more than a year ago. And is the Ender potty-trained yet?

Sob.

Sob.

Sob.

Waaaaaaaah!

“Jane”

P.S. I’m back from the land of the sun and the mouse. Mired in critical deadlines. So you’ll only see me around if the work isn’t going well. In which case, you need to look at me very sternly–in my IRL eye or my cyber-eye–and say, “Get back to work, Jane!” My clients thank you in advance.

It’s the Vice President (Legal) of a Calgary investment banking outfit. Of course. At least it wasn’t the CEO.

Every day ends. Mercifully. And in the evening…

Jane (reading): “Holi is a joyous Indian holiday that comes at the end of winter. Holi is also known as the festival of colors. On this holiday, people run through the streets smearing strangers and friends with colored powder and douring each other with colored water. At the end of the day, everyone is decked out in all the colors of the rainbow.”

Flora: Oh, oh, oh, we could totally do that tomorrow to celebrate the Equinox. Can we, Mom? Can we?

Jane: Well, it would be very fun, I totally agree. But all our neighbours would pretty much hate us.

Toddlers hit. Not all toddlers. But a lot of toddlers. Like, almost all toddlers, at least some of the time. And some of them—not a few, either, a lot—go through phases when they hit all the time. Attachment parented toddlers hit. Breastfed toddlers hit. Bottle-fed toddlers hit. Babyworn toddlers hit. Toddlers of parents who never raise their voices hit. Really. It’s not just your little guy.

When my first little guy when through this hitting phase, I felt incredibly isolated. Alone. And judged up the wazoo. Here’s our story.

2006. It happened today, in the playroom, and my head is still whirring. “Flora!” Cinder yells. “You wrecked my tower. That bothers me! Bothers me! I am so angry I want to hit you! But I don’t want to hit you! Grrr!” I poke my head in from the hallway. Cinder is standing closing and opening his fists and breathing. He sees me looking, looks at me. “I didn’t hit Flora,” he announces. “But I’m not proud of you!” he yells at her. She gurgles and hands him a Lego block. They start building the tower together.

I’ve been waiting for this day for… what, two years? Two years to the day, I think. And I know today isn’t the cure. It’s not the turn around, the end. He will hit his little sister again, probably later today. He will push her, pinch her. But he’s working through it—we’re muddling through it, he’s “getting” it. And the fact that this huge emotional break through—this discovery by himself that just because he wants to hit he doesn’t have to hit—has come on the heels of eight nights of peeing the bed puts all sorts of things into perspective for me. Makes me feel not quite so resentful as I wash the sheets and covers for the ninth day in a row…

I’ve been delaying posting this “hitting thing” exposition until I felt I could clearly articulate where we were, why, and how we got there. I don’t think that’s going to happen in the next few weeks or even months. But based on some conversations I’ve had with other mothers of closely spaced siblings—particularly when the older is a boy!—I think this is a story that must be told, in all of its messiness.

I sleepwalk into the kitchen in search of the first cup of coffee. Boil water. Fight with the grinder. Dump old coffee grounds all over the floor. Clean them up. Make the coffee. Inhale the smell of… sheer bliss, really. If you’re a coffee lover, you know what I mean–there is nothing like it, it is the smell of perfection, the birth and end of the universe in one olfactory sensation, the promise of everything. Ah. Pour the first cup. No cream in the fridge–reach for the milk carton.

Pour.

Discover there are two giant carrots in the milk carton.

Look at them uncomprehendingly, because, you know, I have just smelled and not yet drunk the coffee.

Pour the milk into the coffee carefully. Replace the milk carton in the fridge.

Go sit on the couch beside the 3.5 year old. Drink my coffee.

II.

Sean stumbles into the kitchen in search of his cup of coffee. Lucky man, the lag between his wake up time and mine insufficient today for the first pot to be empty. Pours himself a cup of coffee. Savours the smell. And, responsible father that he is, asks the 2/3 of the awake progeny if they want to eat something. (Their mother does not speak, or serve, until she has finished her second cup of coffee. She is still on the couch drinking the first…) The progeny want cereal.

He grabs bowls. Cereal. Milk. Pours.

“Why the fuck are there two carrots in the milk carton?”

Neither the milk nor the carrots answer. I look at the 3.5 year old. He grins a wicked grin.

“I put them there, Dadda!” he calls out happily.

“Why… why did you put carrots in the milk?” Sean says. His voice full of angst and despair–and see, this is why I do not talk until after the second cup. Why suffer? And make others suffer? Let the caffeine do its work first…

“Flora was peeing,” Ender replies promptly.

I am almost done my first cup of coffee, so I understand perfectly. What he wanted to do was to flush the carrots down the toilet. However, the toilet was occupied. What else could he do with them? Aha! Milk carton!

Sean is still just smelling the coffee. And trying to understand all this. And perhaps on the verge of tears.

And here is proof that I am an excellent, excellent wife and helpmeet: although the effort involved in this is Herculean, I lift myself off the couch, stagger into the kitchen, grab his coffee cup, and put it into his hands. He tries to speak–I shut his mouth with a kiss.

I’d say drink–but I do not speak until I’ve downed the second cup of coffee.

He takes a sip. Then another. The world is slowly becoming a better place, and the case of the carrots in the milk losing its power to ruin his day.

I pour my second cup of coffee. Pour the rest of the milk into it. Shake the carrots out into the sink. Rinse them.

“They don’t look like they’ve been in there very long,” Sean says. He picks up the empty milk carton and peers into it. To determine–by what evidence?–the length of the carrot milk immersion?

Cinder, our 10 year old, stumbles down the stairs. Stops, and stares at the tableau, dominated by his father, evidently distraught, peering into the milk carton. And says…

“Did Ender pee in the milk again?”

I draw the curtain on the resulting scene. Suffice it to say, Sean was never happier that he was lactose intolerant… and Flora may never eat cereal again.

And some blogger love. Last week, Tirzah Duncan, the talented writer-poet-entrepreneur-cynical optimist-coiner-of-phrases-extraordinaire at The Ink Caster, passed The Versatile Blogger award on to me (which of course means someone gave it to her, congratulations, Tirzah). In addition to being a talented writer, Tirzah would be a great person to watch your back come the Zombie Apocalypse. If you don’t believe me, check out this post.

My head wasn’t quite done swelling when TJ, Sara and Jen from Chi-Town Mommy Mayhem — well, possibly just one of them, but I prefer to take the compliment from all three — handed off the Liebster Award to Nothing By The Book. Their blog is “dedicated to the uncensored mommies of Chicago” and their motto is “We don’t sugar coat anything here.” And they have kick ass tweets ( @MayhemMommyTJ).

I’m eight awards or possibly more behind doing the proper reciprocity thing, and with each passing day… Well. If you really want to know seven random things about me, read this my last Blogosphere Group Hug and find out how I once interviewed the prime minister of Canada sans underwear. For blogs that deserve to have the awards passed on to them–check out the blogs I follow, bottom of each page of the blog. Cause, you know, I only follow good ones.

Setting: Ikea. The cafeteria. God, I love the Swedish, bless their socialist-capitalist little hearts. They think of everything, including giving urban mothers in crappy climates the ultimate “come let your children run wild in our giant show room” indoor play area. (Smalland? We don’t go to Smalland. We test all the beds. And couches. And chairs. And shelving units. “Cinder! Get Ender out of the cupboard! I don’t care if he likes it; do not lock him in the pantry!”) Best of all: the lunch. Where else can I feed three kids and self for $10 for lunch? Although, with Cinder ordering two and sometimes three kids meals’ these days, the price tag’s inching up. Still… Ikea. Love it.

And here we are. For lunch and a mission: reading lights for the kids room, a birthday present for Flora’s friend (I’m all about efficiency shopping. The lil’ girl’s lucky today was Ikea day and not tire change day. What little girl wouldn’t love a socket wrench for her seventh birthday?).

The new plan: Shop. Pay for everything. Look at breakable stuff at leisure. Go eat as soon as Ender wakes up.

The revised plan: Shop. Eat. Because the older children are starving (The first thing you learn as a parent: Life with hungry children is not worth living. Especially in public spaces.) Feed Ender during round 2 when he wakes up.

So there we are. Ender asleep in the stroller. Cinder eating fish and chips, Flora devouring meatballs. Me, piggish, with the shrimp AND the salmon plate. Ender asleep… oh, I already mentioned that. Ender asleep. Ah.

Flora: Wow. This is such a nice, peaceful meal.

And she looks around the table as if it pinpoint the difference. Indeed, it is so peaceful. Eating with a 10-year-old and a seven-and-a-half year-old, really, is pretty much the same as eating with adults. Right? They move the food from their plate to their mouths without too many detours. They don’t throw the food. They don’t choose the middle of the meal as the time that they need to scale your back and head for a better view. They don’t pee their pants five minutes in and require an emergency bathroom run. They don’t throw the food–oh, I already mentioned that, didn’t I?

Flora sighs with contentment and then, the penny drops. She looks at sleeping Ender. She looks at me.

Flora: Oh-my-god. This is why you go to Mom’s Nights Out, isn’t it?

Jane: Yup.

Actually, I go to Mom’s Nights Out to have more sex (see The Authoritative New Parents’ Guide to Sex After Children). But that’s a conversation I’m not planning on having with Flora just yet…

One day, we will remember why it is that we don’t go out for dinner much. But inevitably we forget, and we have a, “Hey, we haven’t been out for dinner as a family for weeks–months, actually. Shall we go?”-“Oh, yes, darling, what a great idea!” conversation. And about 10 minutes in, as one of us restrains Ender, while the other apologizes profusely to the waitstaff–or the poor unfortunates seated next to us–and Cinder and Flora clean up the mess, we swear–never again. We are never, ever going out with the toddler, ever, ever again.

(Do not, by the way, share your “Eating in restaurants with toddlers” tips with me. I don’t need them. I had two civilized, distractible, entertainable toddlers who were absolutely amazing in restaurants. Now I have Ender. This, incidentally, is karma, for every time I cast a superior glance at the mother with the freaking out toddler and wondered why she didn’t just bring books, crayons, and funky toys into the restaurant to amuse her child with.)

(The answer to that last query, if you’re eating out with Ender, is that there is no toy that cannot be turned into a projectile, with the right–er, wrong–motivation.)

Anyway–it happened again. We forgot, we were hungry, we went to the restaurant. I’ll spare you the theatrics (although if I could do justice to the spectacle of Ender standing on his head on his chair and then wiggling his butt left-and-right while making farting sounds, I would)–the end-tail of the meal featured Sean putting the Ender into a full-Nelson and manhandling him out of the restaurant while I ordered the desert promised to Cinder and Flora “to go” (sigh), and Nana paid for the meal, clearly thinking we should be saving our money for therapy. While we wrapped up the meal (tip for dining out with Enders: leave huge tips. Huuuuuuggggggeeeee TTTTIIIIPPPPSSS), Sean occupied Ender in the parking lot of the restaurant. Which meant, of course, playing in the van. Or so I thought.

And you needed all of the preceding so that you could understand this:

Ender: Mama! You back! I peed in the van!

Jane: Oh, that’s great darling. We’re all here, let’s load up and…

Sean: That’s great? He tells you he peed in the van, and you say that’s great?

Jane: I thought he said he played in the van… Oh, Ender, you peed in the van? Where?

Ender: On the seat. Right here! Now I have no pants. You pack more pants for me?

Sean (moaning): Right on the seat. We are never, ever, ever going to sell this van.

(Mostly irrelevant aside: we’re trying to sell the van. Live in Calgary and want a 2009 Pontiac Montana? Have I got a deal for you! Freshly shampooed and everything!)

So we drive Nana home, scandalize her neighbours by having half-naked Ender prance down the street to her house, and spend a little time letting Ender vandalize her house while Cinder and Flora watch the last part of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on Nana’s nice big television screen. And then it’s time to go home–with the Ender partially panted this time, sporting a fashionable doo-hickey fashioned out of a swimsuit. Now, Ender’s not great in the car–that whole restrained-while-sitting-down-when-he’d-rather-be-climbing-on-the-roof thing just doesn’t go over very well–so we generally need to take turns entertaining him, singing with him, playing games with him, and otherwise trying to distract his attention from the fact that he’s strapped into the receptacle of torture (aka the car seat) and, once he kicks his shoes off, unable to pelt anyone with anything for the duration of the ride.

And the preceding (as well as the entire earlier vignette) is all a build-up just for this:

The toilet is plugged, and my contact lens case is missing. We suspect the two items are related.

II.

Sean: Jeezus Kee-rist, there is a ton of Lego in this sink drain? What the hell?

Cinder: You have to ask?

Sean: And where’s the little drain protector I put in here to keep this type of thing from happening?

Ender: I put in the toilet this morning. Weee!

III.

I stand in the bathroom, which looks clean, but smells terribly, terribly like pee. I wish I had one of those hi-tech tools for examining the walls. Where is the secret pee spot now? I remember three-year-old Cinder’s glee when he learned that streams of urine could be used to hit targets (“Mom! Look! When I press my penis like this, I hit the top of the garbage can!”) Where is Ender doing target practice? The boy himself wanders in. Plops down on the potty. Then picks it up and dumps it into the garbage can.

“Oops,” he says. “I put pee in garbage can not toilet. Better luck next time.”

Well. One mystery solved.

IV.

Flora: Why do we all have new toothbrushes again?

Jane: You have to ask?

Flora: Oh, Ender! (pause) Mom? You know, at Mimi’s house, they have this thing on the toilet seat to keep it down, so their new baby won’t throw things in the toilet. Why don’t we get one of those?

Jane: We had one of those, briefly.

Flora: We did?

Jane: Yes. It was awful. You and Cinder didn’t know how to work it, so every time you had to use the bathroom, I had to run upstairs and take it off.

Sunshine, morning, so slow, so lazy… do we get out of bed or not? I guess we should. I tousle the toddler’s head.

Jane: Ready to get out of bed, little Ender?

Ender: Ready. Not ready. Ready. OK. Let’s go, Big Mama.

And we roll out, slowly, and fat sweaty hands wrap around my neck, and we gallop down the hallway. Everyone else is up already. I poke my head into the Lego/Computer Room/Sean’s office, where Cinder is already hard at work… er, play.

Jane: Good morning, little love.

Ender: Good morning, little love.

Cinder: Yo, Ender, how are you doing this morning?

Ender: Me happy, little love. But me need to pee.

And we gallop down the hallway the last two feet to the bathroom. Make it. Relief. We poke our heads in through another door. See the Sean.

Jane: Good morning…

Ender: Good morning, our big love.

And kisses and tousles and sunshine. And Ender is ready for a day of action and destruction. There are things to shove down sink drains and toys to put in toilets, there are pictures to scribble on and books to tear up, there are milk jugs in the fridge that need to be poured onto the floor, pots to bang and rearrange, boxes to squash, a dog to terrorize, a fish tank that desperately needs a bar of soap added to it, a sister’s hair to pull, a brother’s Lego creations to destroy, food to smear on walls and throw on the floor, bathwater to drink and pour down the stairs… Oh, it’s a full, full day for an Ender and he lives each minute as fully as possible, and at day’s end, everyone exhausted to bed goes, exhausted by the pace of life set by the Ender.

And Ender falls asleep, exhausted too and so happy and so fulfilled, and already, I can tell from the cast of his eyes and lips as they close, planning the next day’s mischief. And so we all fall asleep too, so we can keep pace with him.

We yell at him, you know. Snap. Complain. Sometimes, run away and hide (even me). But, boy oh boy, we love him. And when he wakes up the next morning, sunshine of our lives, we forget all the “I want to throttle Ender!” moments and just drown in his sunshiney love.

(“The guys” are Cinder and his friends, currently bouncing like mad on the trampoline. And I pause and wonder how to explain to the little dude that 1) he’s two-and-a-half, so I can’t just send him out into the wild that is our Common unsupervised and I can’t supervise him because I need to make supper and, perhaps just as pertinently 2) I’m pretty sure “the guys,” 9, 10 and 12 years old, don’t want him on the trampoline with them. Finally, I say:)

Jane: I think the guys can’t play with you right now; they’re doing something pretty tricky.

Ender: Guys play with me. I’m cool.

(And I pause again, loving the confidence and dreading the meltdown that will follow the rejection that I’m sure is inevitable the second he shows up on the trampoline. But we’re talking on the balcony that overhangs the trampoline, and “the guys” here us.)

And one of them says: For sure you’re cool Ender. Come on down.

(And as he toddles off, brimming with joy, I take a moment to feel thoroughly ashamed. For yet again underestimating children: my children, their good friends that I know so very well. For underestimating their goodness and kindness. And I get all sappy and mellow and happy and reflective, and then a voice brings me back.)

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Toddlers hit. Not all toddlers. But a lot of toddlers. Like, almost all toddlers, at least some of the time. And some of them—not a few, either, a lot—go through phases when they hit all the time. Attachment parented toddlers hit. Breastfed toddlers hit. Bottle-fed toddlers hit. Babyworn toddlers hit. Toddlers of parents who never raise their voices hit. Really. It’s not just your little guy.

When my first little guy when through this hitting phase, I felt incredibly isolated. Alone. And judged up the wazoo. Here’s our story.

2006. It happened today, in the playroom, and my head is still whirring. “Flora!” Cinder yells. “You wrecked my tower. That bothers me! Bothers me! I am so angry I want to hit you! But I don’t want to hit you! Grrr!” I poke my head in from the hallway. Cinder is standing closing and opening his fists and breathing. He sees me looking, looks at me. “I didn’t hit Flora,” he announces. “But I’m not proud of you!” he yells at her. She gurgles and hands him a Lego block. They start building the tower together.

I’ve been waiting for this day for… what, two years? Two years to the day, I think. And I know today isn’t the cure. It’s not the turn around, the end. He will hit his little sister again, probably later today. He will push her, pinch her. But he’s working through it—we’re muddling through it, he’s “getting” it. And the fact that this huge emotional break through—this discovery by himself that just because he wants to hit he doesn’t have to hit—has come on the heels of eight nights of peeing the bed puts all sorts of things into perspective for me. Makes me feel not quite so resentful as I wash the sheets and covers for the ninth day in a row…

I’ve been delaying posting this “hitting thing” exposition until I felt I could clearly articulate where we were, why, and how we got there. I don’t think that’s going to happen in the next few weeks or even months. But based on some conversations I’ve had with other mothers of closely spaced siblings—particularly when the older is a boy!—I think this is a story that must be told, in all of its messiness.

I’m cuddling the Ender before bedtime and he’s sniffling and snuffling and yup, there’s a big booger up the nostril. And I look at that booger and I become obsessed: IT MUST COME OUT NOW! So I reach and snatch it—Ender wails at the intrusion of his personal space and the violation of the mother-toddler nursing contract (Section 4.3.12 “The mother shall not use the promixity of nursing as an excuse to a. Pick the nursling’s nose, b. Scrape cradle cap off the nusling’s scalp, c. Clip the nursling’s fingernails or toenails)—and I am immediately punished. For there I am, all settled for the night in bed, with a giant booger on my finger… and not a tissue in sight.

I look at Ender. He looks at me. He has this, “Well, you’re the dolt who took that out of my nose. It wasn’t bother me at all” look on his face. I’m pretty sure I have a speculative look on my face. He’s my third baby, see, and my other two, well, they shared a habit that would be very useful right now. Yup. They ate snot. Which at the time struck me as horribly, terribly gross—but now I find myself thinking was a pretty useful thing to do.

I can’t believe I’m about to do this. I look at the booger.

“Want to eat it?” I ask Ender. Ender looks back at me. His little eyebrows go up. His little eyes go round. And very slowly, very solemnly, he shakes his head.

“Yuck,” he says. “You eat it, Mommy.”

It took me three kids, but I finally got one that won’t eat snot. This is good news, I remind myself. But there’s that booger on my finger.

I play my last card.

“Your brother would eat it,” I say.

Cause he would. When Cinder was this age—two-and-a-half and change, my life revolved around snot. His snot. Flora’s new baby snot. Her lack of snot. Here are the four bestest snottiest moments:

They share everything

So we’re in the nursing chair, Flora sucking away and holding on for dear life, Cinder climbing on my head, and me 1) reading (for the 7th time that day, god help me, perhaps I can accidentally “lose it”) Pooh’s Grand Adventure, 2) trying to keep Cinder from falling on his pantless bum, or 3) landing on his sister’s head, when all of a sudden Cinder leans over, pats Flora’s face, and says something. I’m sure I heard him wrong. I squint, I ask him to repeat. He says it again. I think, I can’t possibly be hearing that right. I say, “One more time, sweetie?”